Category Archives: The Man in the Woods

Ten Years of Publishing!

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10 years of publishing Steve Griffin

This has been an amazing year for me. I’ve been writing since I worked out which way up to hold a pencil but my publishing journey didn’t begin until 2014 – ten years ago. Since then I’ve published 10 novels, 2 novellas, and 2 books of poetry!

It’s been a blast. Whilst it’s not my main income source (I also work part-time for a neighbourhood charity in London), reading and writing have always been at the core of who I am. I wrote stories as a boy for my friends, published poetry in literary magazines in my twenties and thirties, and began writing full-length novels in my forties.

Traditional vs. Indie

The City of Light

Like most writers, I attempted the traditional route of publishing with my first book, The City of Light, via queries to agents and publishers. I had a good deal of encouragement – agents requesting full manuscripts, asking for edits, having a Children’s Rights manager at Random House championing the book through editorial teams – but ultimately, it didn’t come off. After all that emotional investment, I gave up thinking I’d ever be published. Then a family member suggested publishing independently. I looked into Amazon and, to be honest, never looked back. Amazon may have its faults, but without it I would never have published all these books.

Books for Young Adults

10 years of publishing The Secret of the Tirthas

The first novels I brought out were for young adults. The Secret of the Tirthas is a five-book adventure mystery series with a novella prequel, Swift: The Story of a Witch. It’s based on a magical ‘garden of rooms’ that my wife’s parents owned in Herefordshire, where I imagined each garden containing a portal to the place in the world it represented. When I’d finished that series, I collected the poems I’d had published in poetry magazines together with a few new ones into two poetry books, Up in the Air and The Things We Thought Were Beautiful.

The Things We Thought Were Beautiful Poetry Book

Ghost Stories for Adults

Encouraged by good reviews and reasonable sales, I decided to branch out into writing for adults. I’d always loved horror films and books and so began The Ghosts of Alice series, starting with The Boy in the Burgundy Hood (2019). The story was inspired by an interview my wife had with a heritage agency to be a property manager in an old house where the previous owners still lived in a private wing. I was initially uncertain about changing genre, but The Ghosts of Alice found a bigger market than my young adult series – The Boy in the Burgundy Hood even became an international bestseller in Ghost Stories on Amazon! So I wrote more books in the series, and published two standalone supernatural thrillers. The Man in the Woods and Black Beacon, a Christmas ghost story, both came out in 2023.

10 years of publishing Discover The Ghosts of Alice

Sales and Reviews

I’m now approaching 10,000 copies sold. I know it’s not a huge amount when compared to big name authors, but I keep motivated by considering the average independent novel sells 250 copies, and traditionally published one 3000. Most of mine have significantly exceeded the first, and The Boy in the Burgundy Hood has sold over 3600 copies. My books have gained over 900 reviews on Amazon, averaging around 4.5 stars – with only my Marmite book a bit lower!

Who is the Man in the Woods - the perfect book for Halloween

What’s next?

I’m working on the next Ghosts of Alice story – I have a story arc that will mean two or three more books in the series. I have a second standalone Christmas ghost story nearing completion of first draft – but I won’t be bringing that out until next Christmas. I also have an idea for a sequel to The Man in the Woods, but it’s not fully fleshed out. And then a germ of an idea for another series of supernatural thrillers. Watch this space!

So that’s the story of my ten years of publishing. Every bit of it has been exciting – with the exception of some hardcore editing and marketing (although signing up to Irish book marketer David Gaughran‘s mail list has removed some of the latter’s pain)! There’s never a day when I don’t appreciate that people I’ve never met, from all over the world, are buying, reading and (mostly!) enjoying my books. And it’s not just the sales. As a writer, I’ve got to know some fantastic readers and writers on social media, and I’ve done talks in schools and libraries, signings in bookshops, and read and talked at festivals. Meeting readers is always a real privilege.

So thank you to all of you who have made – and continue to make – my dream a reality. Thank you, really.

My ‘Marmite’ Book

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I’ve decided to do a few general posts about my books. Obviously every time you speak or post about something it’s promotion, but these are not going to be the usual my book is great please buy it sort of thing.

I want to give a feel for things that I think are interesting about each book, maybe why I wrote it, what I was hoping to achieve, how I tried to promote it, or just something leftfield about it.

I’m going to start with my ‘Marmite’ book.

Who is the Man in the Woods - the perfect book for Halloween

I’ve got two novellas out, the second of which is The Man in the Woods. This is my ‘Love it or Hate it’ book, because it’s the only one that’s had a wide range of responses. In terms of reviews, most are 4 and 5 star – but it’s also got the highest number of 3, 2 and 1 star reviews of any of my books.

Some people love it:

Some people don’t get it:

And some people… well, check out possibly my most succinct review ever:

No one says it’s badly written, or unsuspenseful, or the characters are bad (thankfully).

I think things that might cause some readers not to like it include:

  • It’s a novella. People generally prefer longer stories, IMHO.
  • Whilst it’s dark like all my books, it has an unreliable first person narrator, which is different to the others.
  • It’s a ‘high concept’ story with a distinctive twist that turns the whole story on its head. Not many people guess it (only one person I know worked it out before the ending). Some people do not like the twist because of the way it changes everything (and just to add, no, it’s not one of those ‘it was all a dream’ stories, which I don’t like either).
  • I think some people might be expecting it to remain within the mainstream psychological thriller genre – and when the twist pushes it into a subcategory of that genre they’re not always happy (and no, it’s not mucking around with time slip / time travel – I don’t like those much either!)
  • After the twist it ends on a note where some have said they would like it to continue

Addressing the last point, I have to admit, I can see why. I had always conceived of this as a standalone long short story / novella. For me, it was a piece hinged on its short sharp shock, which would always end where it ended. Although now I do have the start of an idea for a sequel – whether I will ever write it, I’m unsure!

Have I wondered about The Man in the Woods getting lower reviews than my other books and whether I should have published it? Yes.

Would I consider unpublishing it? No.

Some books we write just for ourselves knowing that, within those readers whose interests and passions cross over with ours, there will always be a few who like the twisted path you sometimes choose to take.

Next up, The Boy in the Burgundy Hood – a book I was very unsure about when I published it…

The Ultimate Ending

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I’ve been thinking recently, how often does the ending of a film, book or TV series exceed your expectations? How many times have you been blown away – either devastated or thrilled – in those closing moments?

Sixth Sense - the ultimate ending

(Alert – there are plenty of spoilers in this post, so proceed with caution…)

For me, there tend to be two, linked things that lift a story above and beyond the norm. Sadly, one of them is the death of the main character. As a young boy, I was forever imprinted by watching The Alamo with John Wayne, filled with feelings of horror, loss, admiration, and above all disbelief as Davy Crockett pitched himself into the magazine store with a torch in one last act of defiance. I felt similarly about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Saving Private Ryan (such a horrifyingly impersonal but cinematically astute way to pick off a character we’ve come to cherish), The Green Mile, Million Dollar Baby, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. The ending of Night of the Living Dead is horrific, on both an intimate and a broader, social level. (Incidentally, that film was released a month before the US MPAA film rating system came into place, so was first watched by stunned kids and teenagers in a Saturday matinee in Pittsburgh). Everyone remembers the final episode of the First World War series of Blackadder, in which the sharp-as-a-tack Captain Blackadder is sent over the trenches with his hapless brothers-in-arms to certain death.

Wicker Man - ultimate ending

I think the ultimate story ending can also be linked to death, but doesn’t need to be. It’s more to do with a surprise twist that transforms or reframes all that’s gone before. The Wicker Man is one of these – what, no, it can’t all have been… and what’s going on now… surely he’s going to get out of there… Other films with great twists include The Others, The Usual Suspects, Get Out. But I think the best of all, and thus without doubt my favourite film, is The Sixth Sense. How many stories require you to retrace the whole course of an already gripping narrative right from the start?

I was thinking about all this because I’ve strived for those big twists that turn the whole story around in some of my own books. Particularly The Boy in the Burgundy Hood, The Girl in the Ivory Dress, Black Beacon and, probably most dramatically, The Man in the Woods. Because I love it. And want to do more of it. And most of all, because I want to make sure it works for you, the reader!

Tell me a book, film or TV show that’s made you sit up in your seat or burst out into tears. Endings that were devastating or breathtakingly thrilling, that took you somewhere above and beyond all the rest. I’m looking out for my next watch, and my next read.

2023 – A Year in Writing

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As it’s that time for reflection, I thought I’d give an overview of my year from a writing perspective. First of all, the good. As most of you will know, I’ve been concentrating on my supernatural thrillers for the past five years. I’ve written three books in The Ghosts of Alice series, but this year I wanted to publish two standalone horror books that I’ve had in the pipeline for a while  and which I’m glad to say I managed to do.

The first, The Man in the Woods, I started several years ago but was interrupted by life and never finished. I realised when I re-read it earlier this year that I really liked it, it felt very different to my other writing and I loved the final twist.

Thanks to reader Linda Oliphant for this great photo!


Why was it so different to my other supernatural books? Well, several reasons.

  1. it’s the only one told in the first person
  2. it’s a novella
  3. it’s the only one of my supernatural thrillers not to feature ghosts (hope that’s not a spoiler… 😉)
  4. it’s about a teenage boy
  5. some people would even argue it’s not a supernatural thriller at all but… you’ll have to read it to decide whether it is or isn’t yourself!

I love this story. I thought it might well get mixed reviews – and possibly some negative reviews – but they’ve been (almost all!) positive so far.

The second book I published this year I actually finished as a first draft last Christmas – but decided to leave until November before I brought it out, for obvious reasons. It’s Black Beacon, a festive ghost story set on the snow-swept South Downs. I’ve loved writing this book as it’s by far the most personal of my stories, inspired by my grandparents, who met when my grandad was a German Prisoner of War and my grandma a young woman in Eastbourne. All my books tend to have a significant element or two inspired by real life incidents – but this is by far the most personal.

Black Beacon ghost story

What about the bad? Well, whilst life outside of writing has had its ups and downs this year (with a few more downs than usual, including my mum breaking her hip in the summer) the writing has been pretty steady. I miss the excellent independent bookshop we had near us in Leatherhead: Barton’s Bookshop, where I used to go for signing sessions at least once a year, usually during the festive season. I miss the owner, Peter Snell, with his penchant for dressing up as Santa Claus, and I miss the staff – I’ve done signings at other events over the years, but nothing is as satisfying as going to a local bookstore, where everyone has a passion for books and reading.

Barton's Bookshop

That’s it for me – next up for my writing is the fourth Ghosts of Alice story, which has a completely different feel and setting – but more of that later in the year!

I wish you a Happy New Year, and hope it brings you what you want – or at least what you need!

Steve

A house with a troubled personality? The setting of The Man in the Woods

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Do you think a house can have a troubled personality?

My latest novella, The Man in the Woods, is set in the Surrey Hills. It’s a landscape of rolling pine-clad hills and gentle valleys, a place where it doesn’t take long to find deep stillness and magic, belying the fact it’s less than an hour’s drive from London.

A troubled house in the woods, inspiration for The Man in the Woods
scary house in mysterious horror forest at night

I’ve been living on the edge of the Surrey Hills for 13 years now and love the place. But, as is common with creative writing, the house that inspired The Man in the Woods was somewhere else altogether. It was a house on the edge of a woodland in Kenilworth, a small town in Warwickshire, where I lived for a couple of years as a teenager.

An unhappy house

It’s an odd thing to say, but that house in Kenilworth was not a happy house. Whilst I loved Kenilworth itself, and had plenty of good times there, I never really liked that house. Strange things used to happen there.

Little things lost would be found days later, in the most obvious places – absurd things like a toilet roll holder, which turned up the week after in the middle of the bathroom floor. My stereo would whisper and hiss for some time after it was switched off. We were burgled in broad daylight, the dog emerging cowed at the top of the stairs when we got home and found everything in disarray.

My mum and stepdad’s relationship broke down while we were there. But he didn’t move out so we had to walk through ‘his’ rooms to get to ours, which was very uncomfortable.

One day, a woman appeared at the front door and told my mum the house was cursed. She said she’d fallen down the (very steep) stairs while she was living there, and her partner had fallen down a hole nearby and died.

I met one of my best friends from school recently, who I hadn’t seen for a while. He’s certainly the most practical and sensible of all my friends and he worked for years in the car industry. He visited our house in Kenilworth a few times and admitted how much he hadn’t liked it. He confessed he’d always thought it was us, our family, who caused the troubled aura. But then, when we moved to a new home, he started coming round all the time. He realised it hadn’t been us. It was the house.

Do you know a troubled house?

So that’s how the setting for The Man in the Woods came about. I put together a beautiful wood and a house which, despite its idyllic location, I honestly never liked. It felt like the perfect match for my sinister story.

I’m still inclined to think that the feel of that house was more to do with the troubled relationships in it, and that there was some practical explanation to the weird little things that happened. After all, it’s just possible that a dog could have got hold of a toilet roll holder and played with it for a while before dropping it a few days later in the bathroom. But despite that, I keep an open mind. Perhaps there really was something bad that had happened there, something sinister that seeped into the walls.

I’d be really interested to hear if you have any similar stories of a house with a troubled personality, or of any other troubled places? Let me know in the comments below.

If you’d like to read The Man in the Woods, here’s the link:

(Incidentally, there’s a poem about that period of my childhood in my collection, The Things We Thought Were Beautiful – you’ll know which one it is when you see it, the title gives it away!)

The Man in the Woods – a reading

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What better time to do a video reading than on the release of a new book!?

People have been saying some very nice things on Amazon and Instagram about my new psychological thriller, The Man in the Woods. Here’s a few of them:

***** I can’t recommend this book highly enough

***** You’ll be blown away by the ending

***** An easy 5 stars, deserving of 10

If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, here’s a short video reading from the opening chapter to tempt you!

Here’s the blurb:

Who is… the Man in the Woods?

The woods are deep and dark and cold and empty…

…except for a solitary boy, out riding his bike…

…and a lone wanderer…

What will happen when their paths cross?

Whatever it is, things will never be the same again.

A chilling psychological novella with a dark twist, from the author of the bestselling Ghosts of Alice series.

Available on Amazon now:

The Man in the Woods is out now!

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I’m excited to tell you my latest book, a chilling psychological novella called The Man in the Woods, is out now!

The blurb is limited on this one, as I don’t want to give too much away:

Who is… The Man in the Woods?

The woods are deep and dark and cold and empty…

The woods are deep and dark and cold and empty; The Man in the Woods

… except for a solitary boy, out riding his bike…

Except for a solitary boy, out riding his bike; The Man in Woods

… and a lone wanderer…

And a lone wanderer, The Man in the Woods

What will happen when their paths cross?

Whatever it is, things will never be the same again.

The Man in the Woods chilling psychological thriller out now!

The Man in the Woods is available on Amazon, in paperback and Kindle editions – or read for free on Kindle Unlimited! Click below for more details and to read an excerpt: